Here’s where I say U.N.C.L.E.
Your satellite is bigger than mine
The man from U-verse came yesterday.
I thought door-to-door salesman went out with Willy Lohman and the Milkman, but here was U-man, at my front-door, clipboard in hand ready to Sell Me Something.
Or actually, not to sell me something, as he pointedly protested while the door closed on his face. He was there to Save Me Money. A bundle of money, to be exact.
AT&T U-verse, is AT & T’s foray into the competitive TV provider business. If cable and Internet companies can dangle phone lines in front of your eyes, AT &T wants to be able dangle TV in front of them. This TV would come over fiber-optic wires and would provide IPTV — Internet Protocol Television — which would compete directly with cable and satellite TV.
(And, by the way, if you’re still among the fossils with TV antennae, you are entirely within your rights to be confused.)
The buzz word today is bundle. Today’s companies want to provide you with a bundle of savings by bunching up your cable, cell phone and Internet bill into one, tidy package. It’s a bit like a car package. Sure, all you want is air conditioning. But you’re going to get the automatic windows, Rear Window Wiper/Washer, satellite radio and automatic eject button – all for one low price.
But for a thrifty, a-la-carte admittedly high-maintenance New Englander like me, these prix fixe meals seem a little excessive. If all I want is air conditioning, I should be able to get it and it should cost less. This bundling feels a little gluttonous. I feel like I ordered the chicken and got the pork, meat and ziti diner all for $1 more.
The first thing I told Mr. U-verse was “I don’t want cable.”
Perhaps it was the queerness of the statement that threw him off. Yes, I have rabbit ears Yes, I’m an anomaly. No, I don’t miss cable. Yes, I can live without “Sponge Bob Squarepants.” Call me stoic.
This seems to be the right time to be thrifty, puritanical and cheap. But with a national economy that is 70 percent dependent on consumer spending, this kind of attitude seems no only miserly but unpatriotic. And yet improvidence seems even more gauche, which is why retailers are trying to eke out as much as they can from you in the guise of saving you money.
It’s no wonder that consumers, the engine of the economy, are filling a tad flustered. We’re told spending is imperative to resuscitate the economy, yet chastised for our years of wanton extravagance.
The U-verse bait seems to epitomize this dysfunction: To embrace frugality – that is, lower my bill – I have to buy more – not just the phone, but the Internet, cell phone and cable. Such a bundle will purportedly save me all kinds of money, but it doesn’t really square up to the central question, which is: Do I really need all this stuff?
Much of the economic boom years were sustained by blurring the distinction between want and need, which may be why untangling the two now is so prickly.
Over the last decade, spending on entertainment outpaced overall expenditures, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. The average American spends more on entertainment than on gasoline, household furnishings and clothing – and nearly the same amount as spent on dining out, according the BLS.
Unsurprisingly, among the 20 percent of households with more than $77,000 a year in pretax income, more money is spent on entertainment – $4,516 a year – than on health care, utilities, clothing or food eaten at home. How is that possible? Largely because we have given the luxuries the same degree of indispensability as necessities.
Not long ago, The Washington Post reported that the average consumer riffles “through an average of 12 bills a month for such frivolous diversions as TiVo, the Internet and cell phones.” Add up the phones, Internet, cable, satellite radio, iTunes, streaming music and the TiVo and you’re looking at an easy $200 a month.
Here is the Gordian’s knot of the financial collapse writ small. I’d like to help Mr. U-verse build the world again, but I’m growing exhausted by the ceaseless updating, revamping and redefining of household essentials. It has made me exhausted and a tad jaded. I’m more than willing to get this economy humming again, but not at the expense of sacrificing my reason – or my check book.